10.4 Humanities

A very warm welcome to Humanities and we are really looking forward to meeting you ! You are joining a friendly and lively discipline and we look forward to getting to know you and welcoming you into our community.

In addition to our Single Honours history degree programme, we are also the home of interdisciplinary degrees with humanities on BA History and Politics, BA History and International Relations, History and Geography, Environmental Humanities and the Flexible Combined Honours (FCH) degree programmes. We are part of HaSS Cornwall which is itself part of the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS).

We are a relatively small department and you will soon get to know us, especially those staff who will be teaching you. In the meantime you can find out a bit more about us and our specialisms through our staff profiles.

We know the first few days can be confusing, so remember that information about your course, the library, key contacts, useful links, and ways to get involved in the community are all available on the Penryn Humanities Gateway.

Key contacts

Your head of department is Professor Nicola Whyte (N.M.Whyte@exeter.ac.uk).

Deputy Director of Education and Student Experience (DDESE): Dr James Kelly

Your Personal Tutor: You will be assigned a personal tutor whom you will meet as part of your first weeks’ induction to your course. This tutor should be your first port of call for any academic questions you might have, and they can also signpost you to where to get help with any other queries or problems that may arise during your studies.

Your Student Representatives: Each SSLC (Staff-Student Liaison Committee) has a dedicated subject chair and student representatives for each year of study. There are also module representatives for each of the modules you study. Do think about becoming a module or programme rep yourself!

Your Mentors: We run a mentor programme for first years run by students who are in the second and third year of their studies in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Our fantastic mentors run study sessions every week in term time. These will appear on your timetable, these are a mixture of workshops and writing café sessions. You will also meet your peer transition tutors during welcome week who are there to answer any questions and help you to settle in.

Expectations for attendance and engagement

We expect you to attend all your timetabled classes. If you are unable to attend a class because you are ill, you should report your absence via the iExeter absence reporting tool. You should also email your lecturer directly to let them know that you will not be able to attend, and to find out what work you will need to do to make up for your absence. If you have a longer illness and are absent for more than 7 days in a row, you will need to get a doctor’s certificate and lodge this with the info point in the Peter Lanyon Building on Campus.

Preparing for your degree

We don’t expect you to complete any preparatory work before you get here, but if you’re keen to do some reading before term starts, we’ve put together some suggestions. You are not expected to read all of these works – just pick and choose the titles that appeal most.

The following reading might be useful to you over the summer, although it is not compulsory!

• Richard Rhodes, Energy: A Human History (2018)
• David Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History (2016)
• E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (various editions)
• Sheila Rowbotham, Dreamers of a New Day: The Women who Invented the Twentieth Century (2011)
• S Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A New Global History of Capitalism (2014)
  
  

Our community

You will meet your SSLC chair and student reps in Welcome Week and can contact them if you would like to provide feedback on any aspect of your teaching, learning or wider student experience.

We would also encourage you to look out for the History Society advertising their events in Welcome Week and throughout the year. They are a friendly subject society who run social events and other activities including academic support, trips, and guest speakers.

  Activity: Introduce yourself!

In the meantime, we would love it if you could start getting to know one another by posting a brief introduction in the Forum below. Please tell us who you are, what programme you are on, and which area of history you are most interested in studying, and why!

To post, simply click 'REPLY.'

Please be aware that any comments and contributions in this forum are open to the general public and NOT just other students in the cohort.

Once you have finished reading about your department(s), you can skip to the end of this section rather than clicking next and reading through all department pages.